My Life and its Impact

 

Welcome avid readers and individuals who are interested in a growing mind. This first, initial, post is about myself and how my past will impact my future teaching. As someone who grew up in a small, rural town in the middle-of-nowhere, Kansas, I am aware of how different my education was compared to peers of mine who got a city education. While attending Stafford High School, the average class size was 12-16 people, my graduating senior class was 15 people. Having so few students allowed for a few benefits to happen, we got more directed one-on-one attention in and outside of class, students and faculty could also form closer relationship which helped tremendously in learning, and lastly, students could get to know their peers on a deeper level than just names. I can still remember the names of everyone in my class and the classes around me. You may be wondering, “What does this have to do with my teaching in the future?” Well, I am glad you asked. This story is part of who I am, something that regardless of what I think, impacts how I view education and how I will plan my curriculum and location to teach. This small town also assisted in the creation of my identity and biases.

Before diving more into my experiences, I would like to paint a clearer picture of myself. I am white, I am gay, and I identify as a male. My family would be considered middle-class. While I grew up as a Christian, I have turned away from religion entirely because of how the majority of Christians view the LGBTQ+ community. My parents divorced after my youngest sister was born, which was around 2005 or 2006. My dad gained custody of 4 young children, my older sister, myself, my younger sister, and my youngest sister. After the split, my dad moved to Stafford working with the man who runs the Stafford County newspaper. Eventually, my dad becomes the owner. My dad remarries around the time I’m in the third grade, to someone who has 3 kids herself. However, my step-mom’s youngest kid is the same age as my older sister. My sisters and I would visit our mom in Augusta every weekend while growing up too. Some abilities I had while growing up were being able to talk to everyone, playing the trumpet, gaming, and reading. Up to this point, my education includes my high school diploma from Stafford and almost a bachelor's degree in Secondary English Education from Wichita State University. My friend group has evolved over time. In primary, I stayed around 1-2 people I called my friends. That quickly changed when one of these people moved away at the end of my middle school career. In high school, I gained more friends as I started to know who I wanted to become. I started getting out of my shell and it wasn’t until I joined the forensics team that I was completely comfortable with who I was and who my real friends were. 

After graduating and moving to Wichita, I became friends with my dormmates and found by amazing best friend who lived right down the hall from me. Throughout college, I became roommates again with one of my dormmates and continued living next to my best friend, Ashley. These last few years have changed my political affiliation a lot, I used to think that I was republican when I was in high school, because everyone in Stafford was, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Upon moving to Wichita and learning more about our government and what the republican party stood for, I realized my views more identified as a democrat.

Much of my identity and experiences will impact my teaching of ELA. Since I came from a small town, I know the impact of one-on-one assistance with a student is, I know how many things that students are juggling along with their school life. Many of the people I grew up with had a lot to deal with at home and I hope that as I come into this profession, I don’t assume that all students have the same home life that I did. My experience in ELA and in college English classes make me want to choose some books that are recognized in the literary canon and choose books that may be more relevant to the kids I am working with. One of my favorite courses at Wichita has been African American Literature, this course has widened my perspective on the world and the lasting impact that slavery has had and the impact of microaggressions that persist to this day. Depending on the class, I would want to share this experience. I would want to be careful in this endeavor, as Tricia discusses an experience that another educator, Wolfe-Rocca, had in her classroom when she was discussing racist graffiti in the boys’ bathroom (pg15). This experience that this other teacher had when she was “eager” to discuss this issue in class, the conversation took a turn when her predominately white classroom “downplayed the racism faced by African American students in the school…” (pg15). This experience made me think about how I may bring up such a sensitive topic in my own school growing up. In a small town, there wasn’t much diversity, we had some Spanish speaking students, but we didn’t have any black students until my junior year in high school. Many students in small towns don’t experience diversity until they travel for school or for trips. It’s important to build an understanding and allow for students to understand that racism is still very much alive today and it continues if they are not educated or have not experienced diversity.

Some steps to design antibias in my instruction would be to teach the counternarrative if I read a book in the literary canon. Something else I want to incorporate is some time after our readings for students to reflect on what they read and how it made them feel. This gives students time to understand why they may feel this way after reading a certain book or after having a class discussion about a topic they don’t know much about. Just as I want to make my students feel welcomed, I want my students to make other students feel welcomed in the classroom.